You wouldn’t know that from reading US news reports, which focus on deaths caused by Russian bombing or by Syrian air and ground forces.

What is clear is that the Trump administration is increasingly being dominated by neo-conservative and pro-empire advisors, many of them active or former generals, who favor a continuance of the long-time US strategy of regime-change in the Third World, as well as a revival of the Cold War against Russia and China, as well as a hard line, and perhaps ultimately war against Iran.

A deeper US military involvement in the Syrian conflict, which runs the risk of direct military conflict between US and Russian forces because of Russia’s active (and legal) military backing of the Syrian government at the request of the Assad regime, seems to be increasingly likely, which will mean more death and destruction in that long-suffering country. It also significantly raises the risk of a world war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, should either side end up shooting down the other’s aircraft, or bombing the other side’s troops on the ground.

This would seem to be something that the American people should be deeply concerned about, and informed about by their supposedly independent news media. It's not happening.

As noted international law expert Francis Boyle warns ominously, "It is the ...imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity."

Jess Guh's Posts

As a queer woman, when it comes to film, I fulfill pretty much all of the stereotypes. I don’t really like action films. I am underwhelmed by special effects and action sequences. As my wife once complained, “All the movies you like… nothing happens in them.” My undergraduate...